Build-your-own-Dropbox service AeroFS now open to the masses

New pricing tiers and better support for enterprises are also being introduced.

If you want access to the best features of Dropbox or one of its many competitors—automated file syncing between computers, a way to automatically keep old versions of your synced files, etc.—but you don't want to keep your stuff in someone else's cloud, AeroFS is a promising service. It can provide file syncing for many clients using your own local server (or, for businesses, Amazon S3 storage that you have more direct control over). When we last wrote about the service, it was still in an invite-only beta, but a message that went out to users last night declared that this beta is over and that the service is now open to anyone.

Now that the service is out of beta, though, it will start to cost money for larger groups of users. The "free" tier can support up to three "team members" (members who can be given full access to every synced folder in your AeroFS setup) and one "external collaborator" (an external user who can only view and edit the contents of a single user) per folder. Starting at four team members and going up to 50, the service costs $10 per member per month, and this also buys you unlimited access for your external collaborators. Finally, for teams larger than 50 members and teams that need integration with existing Active Directory or LDAP setups, you need to call AeroFS to get pricing, which will likely vary based on the size of your organization.

Existing beta users will be grandfathered in without being asked to pay for anything, but adding additional team members or external collaborators to your folders will be subject to the same pricing options outlined above.

I haven't checked in on AeroFS since writing about it back in September, but a quick look at the release notes suggests that the product has made significant progress since then. Our two main complaints—that resolving conflicts was a bit clunky and that there was no Web interface—appear to have been addressed, among many other performance improvements and bug fixes. If you're interested in giving it a try, you can register here.

49 Reader Comments

I think if I'm going to 'Build my own Dropbox' I'll go with the open source Owncloud or just stick with Dropbox for the convenience and ease of use. This seems to be filling a need I don't have.

Edit: Just looked over the TOS of both AeroFS and ownCloud's Business Edition. What a vast difference. It's like the EFF wrote the terms for ownCloud and the NSA wrote them for AeroFS. No thanks, don't need it.

This may have a role in large, security-obsessed companies (or those that by-law cannot move data off their premises), but for the average Ars reader, this isn't that useful. Way too limited in terms of team size on free tier (I couldn't even share with my half my immediate family), and I have to pay for the server/hard drive space to boot?

Me and my 60 person small biz are clearly not the market here.If I want my own cloud I'll go with something like OwnCloud and otherwise it would be cheaper/better/faster to just choose Google Drive, SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Box.com.

Edit: Just looked over the TOS of both AeroFS and ownCloud's Business Edition. What a vast difference. It's like the EFF wrote the terms for ownCloud and the NSA wrote them for AeroFS. No thanks, don't need it.

Hey Tom,

The Acceptable Use Policy for Aero is pulling up a blank page for me (I already sent an email to their support team letting them know) but the AeroFS TOS looks like I would expect. They don't claim ownership of any of my files under any circumstances, they let me run their software for free, I can't sue them if AeroFS melts down and destroys one/all of my files... pretty normal stuff. Can you expand on what you saw that you didn't like?

I think if I'm going to 'Build my own Dropbox' I'll go with the open source Owncloud or just stick with Dropbox for the convenience and ease of use. This seems to be filling a need I don't have.

This seems to be aimed at the corporate sector.

There is now a company behind ownCloud at http://owncloud.com, which is directly aiming at the corporate sector, as well.

Maybe AeroFS is easier to setup? OwnCloud is far easier to setup now than a couple years ago, but it's still a ways from trivial. If AeroFS can be setup without having to configure local resources (like MySQL or the like) than that could be a big win for some people.

I currently use both dropbox and aerofs. I thought I'd try out owncloud based on the first few comments here, but it doesn't look to be a suitable replacement for either of them.

My main complaint about owncloud is that I need to set up a server of some sort (or is this not true?).

With aerofs, you can install it on two computers and it will instantly sync between them without any configuration other than your username/password. It will even sync directly between two computers on a local network (even if the network doesn't even have internet access). This last feature (and unlimited storage) is the main reason why I don't use only dropbox. To be fair, dropbox will use lan sync *eventually*, but first the whole file has to be uploaded to their server. With aerofs, there is no central storage server to upload to.

Edit: Just looked over the TOS of both AeroFS and ownCloud's Business Edition. What a vast difference. It's like the EFF wrote the terms for ownCloud and the NSA wrote them for AeroFS. No thanks, don't need it.

Hey Tom,

The Acceptable Use Policy for Aero is pulling up a blank page for me (I already sent an email to their support team letting them know) but the AeroFS TOS looks like I would expect. They don't claim ownership of any of my files under any circumstances, they let me run their software for free, I can't sue them if AeroFS melts down and destroys one/all of my files... pretty normal stuff. Can you expand on what you saw that you didn't like?

RE: AUP, sorry about that -- just fixed the page!

I too would like to know any feedback Tom may have about the TOS and how we can improve it. We went to really great lengths to try and explain how we do business and how we value your privacy/data, which is why some parts of the terms are as long as they are. If there's specific issues you'd like to us address, feel free to email us at support@aerofs.com, or me directly at yuri@aerofs.com

ShareFile StorageZones from Citrix is also another option that I have been evaluating for awhile, except like these you go all in with the software running the file share.

My issue that I have been looking for is a system that will allow you to go in through UNC paths as well. Having the users go into a mapped drive or through a desktop/mobile client is great for general file share systems. However I also have a few file shares that get populated via external systems, code referencing UNC shares in the system, etc that users later access themselves. (E.G., file gets created by ERP system and is then copied into a particular folder on a file share that people access.) I know ShareFile doesn't allow drilling in via UNC, but what about the other options out there? Are their any? I know I am not the only one facing this dilemma.

I have been using AreoFS for several months. For me, the advantage is that I can use it to automatically sync files such as password vaults and financial data that I do not want stored on the internet.

So, if you're providing the storage space yourself, what is the monthly charge actually getting you?

If all you'd like to do is sync data between your own devices, we provide that service for free. Our pricing is based around the need that businesses have to administrate teams. You keep the data, we help with the administration.

I use AeroFS pretty heavily for Ars--I keep all of my story pics and text in AeroFS folders, so that they're current on whatever device I'm sitting down in front of to write. I could use Dropbox, I suppose, but AeroFS tosses the files directly between my computers rather than tying up my upload bandwidth with big files.

Is there a white paper that describes how AeroFS security works? I took a brief look through the FAQ and some other material, but couldn't find anything that describes how it works end-to-end. It appears from what I've read, though, that Aero runs their own CA, and they sign the certs used by the various clients that sync your data. So, despite everything being encrypted in-transit, it seems as though somebody like The Government™ could come in, force Aero to issue them a cert, and then sync all of your files. Or if Aero's CA certificate were compromised, somebody could start issuing themselves certs, and sync all of your files as well.

Can anyone link to something that would either confirm or deny that understanding?

Would love to have my Documents and Work directories auto syncing between my computers, but A) don't want to move them into the AeroFS folder (have some work files with paths to linked files that need to be maintained) and B) don't have enough space on my main drive to store my Work directory even if I wanted to move it into AeroFS' "library"

I think if I'm going to 'Build my own Dropbox' I'll go with the open source Owncloud or just stick with Dropbox for the convenience and ease of use. This seems to be filling a need I don't have.

This seems to be aimed at the corporate sector.

There is now a company behind ownCloud at http://owncloud.com, which is directly aiming at the corporate sector, as well.

Maybe AeroFS is easier to setup? OwnCloud is far easier to setup now than a couple years ago, but it's still a ways from trivial. If AeroFS can be setup without having to configure local resources (like MySQL or the like) than that could be a big win for some people.

I tried to set up Owncloud on my Ubuntu home server a few months ago without much luck. Lots of messing with SQL, stuff that was not mentioned in any of the guides I looked at. Got it set up with a folder, but it does not sync anything. Gave up in the end. Might give it another try, but was not trivial.(although I have almost no knowledge of this stuff so is clearly my fault, but still)

Edit: Just looked over the TOS of both AeroFS and ownCloud's Business Edition. What a vast difference. It's like the EFF wrote the terms for ownCloud and the NSA wrote them for AeroFS. No thanks, don't need it.

Hey Tom,

The Acceptable Use Policy for Aero is pulling up a blank page for me (I already sent an email to their support team letting them know) but the AeroFS TOS looks like I would expect. They don't claim ownership of any of my files under any circumstances, they let me run their software for free, I can't sue them if AeroFS melts down and destroys one/all of my files... pretty normal stuff. Can you expand on what you saw that you didn't like?

RE: AUP, sorry about that -- just fixed the page!

I too would like to know any feedback Tom may have about the TOS and how we can improve it. We went to really great lengths to try and explain how we do business and how we value your privacy/data, which is why some parts of the terms are as long as they are. If there's specific issues you'd like to us address, feel free to email us at support@aerofs.com, or me directly at yuri@aerofs.com

Cheers,Yuri

Fair questions, and I know I am being a bit hard on AeroFS. Here's my feedback for what it's worth:

1) Mandatory Arbitration Clause?2) Wall of words, dense legalese with a bit of a CAPS LOCK issue in parts. It sets an adversarial tone.3) The entire agreement is unilateral, can be changed by you any time, and with so many 'roll your own' options out there I simply don't need to accept them.

1) AeroFS doesn't appear to use the native filesystem apis to detect changed files and instead relies on the last modified timestamp. 2) It also doesn't appear to support partial file synchronization which means hosting a TrueCrypt container is not feasible.

So, not really capable of being a Dropbox replacement for me even though I'd really like to move off Dropbox since I don't want or need their S3 storage.

I think if I'm going to 'Build my own Dropbox' I'll go with the open source Owncloud or just stick with Dropbox for the convenience and ease of use. This seems to be filling a need I don't have.

This seems to be aimed at the corporate sector.

There is now a company behind ownCloud at http://owncloud.com, which is directly aiming at the corporate sector, as well.

Maybe AeroFS is easier to setup? OwnCloud is far easier to setup now than a couple years ago, but it's still a ways from trivial. If AeroFS can be setup without having to configure local resources (like MySQL or the like) than that could be a big win for some people.

I tried to set up Owncloud on my Ubuntu home server a few months ago without much luck. Lots of messing with SQL, stuff that was not mentioned in any of the guides I looked at. Got it set up with a folder, but it does not sync anything. Gave up in the end. Might give it another try, but was not trivial.(although I have almost no knowledge of this stuff so is clearly my fault, but still)

It isn't trivial to set up, that is true. But the latest version now sets itself up if you already have a running web server. All you need to do is download a php file to your web site first and owncloud will then install itself. When i ran it on my ubuntu server it just sort of worked without me having to do much configuration.

That said, it is targeted towards people with a little web experience, which isn't me either. Still, it has become my favorite open source project since it genuinely works to liberate you from having your data ever get out of your control. Projects like these restore some of my faith in humanity.

This article reminds me: hey ars, how about an Owncloud review? The latest version was just released and I think there is a growing interest in solutions like these that let people take control over their own data.

And the consumerization of IT continues..... without anyone actually asking IT people what's needed.

We don't want synching between devices. That would push the potentially sensitive data to local storage on user's devices and possibly, quite probably, their personal devices too. We want the data stored on our own systems, and users accessing it remotely from their devices (without VPN!), with two factor authentication needed. Backup and versioning all taken care of on our own system without the user lifting a finger. We also want the ability for users themselves to control which co-workers have access to their files, and we want this system to integrate well with the office productivity suite in use.

We already have such a system. It is called SharePoint.

Sharepoint is a good tool that serves your needs. Others have different needs that AeroFS can serve.

I'll paraphrase Entegy's comment, and note that I miss Speakeasy's FileCloud service. It was a free service with commercial upgrade options, just like most of these services... but the feature which I found the most handy was what amounts to a clientless implementation; you could use standard WebDav over SSL (the client of which is built-in to Windows, MacOS X and most Linux flavors) to access the shared data stores, which essentially made the remote volume look and behave exactly like any other local network shared volume. Other free services have instead offered web interfaces and custom client software, both of which I personally find to be less optimal. (I'm not permitted to install software on my work computer... and frankly, in my experience, web interfaces are really hard to do right. )

WebDav can be installed with Apache, which is open source software, and I keep telling myself that I'll eventually just roll my own webdav server... but I still haven't gotten around to doing it, and with five munchkins running around my house, my free time seems to be all the more precious to me these days. Does anyone know if one of the various products mentioned in this thread includes an easy to install implementation of WebDav?

I think if I'm going to 'Build my own Dropbox' I'll go with the open source Owncloud or just stick with Dropbox for the convenience and ease of use. This seems to be filling a need I don't have.

Edit: Just looked over the TOS of both AeroFS and ownCloud's Business Edition. What a vast difference. It's like the EFF wrote the terms for ownCloud and the NSA wrote them for AeroFS. No thanks, don't need it.

And those of that want something that actually works will continue to look elsewhere

I use AeroFS pretty heavily for Ars--I keep all of my story pics and text in AeroFS folders, so that they're current on whatever device I'm sitting down in front of to write. I could use Dropbox, I suppose, but AeroFS tosses the files directly between my computers rather than tying up my upload bandwidth with big files.

I don't understand this particular point. AeroFS would have to upload the files as well for them to be accessible anywhere else. Are you talking different computers all on the same network so it never has to go outside?

And the consumerization of IT continues..... without anyone actually asking IT people what's needed.

We don't want synching between devices. That would push the potentially sensitive data to local storage on user's devices and possibly, quite probably, their personal devices too. We want the data stored on our own systems, and users accessing it remotely from their devices (without VPN!), with two factor authentication needed. Backup and versioning all taken care of on our own system without the user lifting a finger. We also want the ability for users themselves to control which co-workers have access to their files, and we want this system to integrate well with the office productivity suite in use.

We already have such a system. It is called SharePoint.

Sharepoint is a good tool that serves your enterprise needs. Others have different needs that AeroFS can serve.

T,FTFY.

They are targeting enterprise, amongst others, and here this sort of thing is precisely what not to do.

For SMB who couldn't care less about data security (they should but they won't, not unless they get hacked and it's made VERY public, which isn't likely for SMB) and for private use? Sure go for it. I'd be afraid to unleash this in the enterprise.

Funny you meant ion WebDAV, I had a good look at OwnCloud and it uses WebDAV for the core of its protocol technology.Problem with using WebDAV as OwnCloud does as a Dropbox competitor is that its quite inefficient.When I tried out OwnCloud I could see a constant stream in the apache web log of every file I had in OwnCloud being listed with a web request. In other words the MS windows OwnCloud client needs to send a webdav post/get type request for EVERY SINGLE file you have individually to see if the file has changed. That is crap.

I tested it with a decently large list of files of just stuff I have in a gigabit Ethernet environment and it would take at least a day to check over all my files just once to see if they had changed or not.All up OwnCloud has nice goals but its just dodgey and problem prone if you look and the protocol technology it utilises to achieve its goals. It didn't work properly for me and I can't see it working properly as people expect Dropbox to work unless you have a very limited number of files in your OwnCloud, the simple protocol method it uses its simply not robust enough.

I'm sorry but this is a complete joke compared to ownCloud, and I'm dissapointed in Ars for not pointing this out, ownCloud is completely and totally free, and if you want the enterprise/business support, you can get that. ownCloud is Open-Source software, owncloud is much more mature, ownCloud has it's own app API, and has an established community with a couple of great apps. ownCloud is super-stable, and is crazy-easy to setup. It has only like 3 dependencies (php-intl, php-xml, php-gd, and php-mbstring) and that't literally as easy as yum install. The software can literally be installed with 3 bash commands. All you have to do is yum install those 4, wget the software, and copy it into your server's directory. And boom, just open the page in your browser. That's insane. It has sqlite support, so you don't even need to make any databases yourself. Plus, there's an app, as well as a desktop client, and you have unlimited installs. I'm sorry, but this piece of software is a PoS, and I don't know why in the world anybody would use this instead of Owncloud.

I setup ownCloud on my CentOS box Monday, removed it Tuesday. I'll be the first to admit that I may be the reason that it didn't work right but the biggest issue I had with ownCloud was that it was sooooooo slow, minutes to load the default page but yet my mediawiki takes seconds. I may give it another try but if your not 100% perfect on the initial config your screwed.

I use git-annex for syncing between computers, maintaining a single tree of all my files (git-annex keeps track of which file is on which drives, how many copies there are for backup, hashes files so it can detect corruption and replace damaged files if you have extra copies). I can store your stuff on external drives, various cloud services (box.com, s3, glacier etc), there's a command line tool and an "assistant" that watches folders and sync them when there are new files or changes. It's open source, works on Mac and Linux, a Windows port is planned. Worth a serious look, don't get put off by the simplistic looking web site..

Can you tell AeroFS to sync only between machines on the same LAN and never upload/sync through the gateway?

I had the same question. I am actually looking for a solution that could back up my laptop over LAN effortlessly when I am at home, but not through an internet connection. While Aero FS seems to have this capability, it can not be programmed to do so exclusively over LAN short of disconnecting from the internet (http://support.aerofs.com/forums/67721- ... a-lan-only).